The Khajuraho taboos

Khajuraho Travel Blog

Well, after the most important monument in India, the beautiful Taj Mahal, we moved to another “tourist must”:Khajuraho.

Despite the fact that in the West we consider India as a compact and uniform nation; in reality it is really an agglomerate of religions, cultures and -of course- history. The Taj is a monument of love built by a powerful emperor to his wife: it’s a complex project, organic in its lines and forms, clear with the white marble (not so white, marble in India is really impure, and it looks grey from far) it is made by.

Khajuraho instead is the product of culture: temples were edified in a different ancient time (IX, X centuries), by different artists, but with the same subject: sex, hard and opened!

It’s not sure why, in this part of India only, the wanted to represent this, maybe it was not a taboo, maybe it was a sacred worship. There isn’t a specific explanation, but you can see 69 poses, lesbian representations, animal sex, orgies… look at the photos! Of course not every statue has this aim, but it’s very significant in the art of these few temples in the middle of India.

There are not more than these temples in Khajuraho, but they are significant and we were satisfied - I think you also, now that you have seen the photos!!!!

Henni:

The temples in Khajuraho were amazing.

There was something so natural about them though the poses they demonstrated were really Kamasutra stuff… In total they say that there were originally 84 temples but nowadays only 25 are left. Those ones left are in three different groups around the village of Khajuraho and only for one group you have to pay to get in.

In those temples the tiniest little details are the most remarkable thing. One of the temples had in total 872 statues in acrobatic positions. I guess that while you can see that those statues still now are kind of a taboo, they must have been something really scandalizing in the past.

Though Khajuraho was a really great place to see, it is situated basically in the middle of nowhere. They don’t have decent roads to get there and the trip takes like hours and hours by train and by bus… That is why we wanted to save some time by taking an Indian airlines flight. This was a good decision although the plane was late and there was a Muslim festival in Varanasi so in the end it took anyway a lifetime for us to get to the hotel in Varanasi.